Searchterm Entry #1: Cleaning the Sty With a Jigsaw Homemaker

What lies below is the first entry to our first ever Search Term Challenge, a dark and twisted tale for mature, non-squeamish audiences only. For details of the challenge, see here.

The author of this entry is Zoe E. Whitten, whose other often disturbing writing can be found over on her website.

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Cleaning the Sty With a Jigsaw Homemaker

My two bellowing bastard brothers demand that I do all the chores. I hate housework, and I work my five fingers to the bone with no thanks, even though they’re usually responsible for our dirty house. They say I should do it because housework is woman’s work. According to them, it’s their job to bring home the meat, and it’s my job to clean up after them.

It’s not really my fault that I’m crippled. I was born this way, and I hardly think it’s fair that I have to mop up all these bloody guts and burn the leftovers of their latest victims.

I look under the couch and groan as I find a loose penis. I tug out the extra sex along with an adopted family of dust bunnies.

Stupid men are so wasteful. This could make a perfectly good stew if it hasn’t already spoiled. But does it ever occur to them to put things away in the icebox? Nooo! That’s woman’s work, tidying up and putting leftover food in the icebox. Well, the little woman sure as shit can’t put the dick in the freezer to make cocksicles if she doesn’t know where the pulled pecker is.

I sniff at the tip and crinkle my face. I should toss it on the couch cushions and make them smell it. But I take it to the kitchen trash. I throw it in the metal bin with the other rotting parts that were left around the house. Then I soak the whole mess in vodka and toss in a match.

Ugh, I hate that smell. Rotting flesh is bad enough, but rotting and burning makes a horrible odor. I don’t gag like I used to, but that don’t mean I like it. I’ve just gotten used to it. Still I want to get rid of the leftovers by burying them outside like normal people. But I’m not even allowed out of the house because I’m supposedly too ugly to be seen in public.

That’s rich. My brothers are so ugly that they inspire sideshow fables from every child they pass. I can even imagine the kids asking, “Is a circus in town? Just look at those sideshow freaks!”

Both of my brothers weigh over three hundred pounds, but they still dress like they’re two hundred and fifty. Fat rolls pile out of their sleeves, and between their too tight jeans and too short shirts, they expose the two least appetizing muffintops in the county. Those muffins ain’t nothing nice like blueberry or chocolate neither. Nah, this is pubic hair and cottage cheese. Or maybe stomach lint and smegma.

Bastards. I should toss a penis on the couch right between the two ugly bastards. The pair of rolling pale, hairy monsters remind me of testicles sometimes, so a penis between them would be fitting. It’s a fair comparison anyway, since they’re a pair of nuts and are often rather testy.

This private joke amuses me so much that I cease my cleaning to hobble to my room for my diary. It’s a slow, slow trip, and I almost fall over in the middle of the room, where there’s nothing for me to grab. It’s real hard for me to keep on my feet, mainly cause I ain’t got no feet, see. I was born without them, or most of my fingers. Actually, I was born without a lot of things. I’m missing an eye, my nose, both ears, and a few ribs.

Obviously, whenever my brothers are eating ribs, they ask if I want any spares. It doesn’t get funnier the more often they say it.

Before she died, Momma used to say I was like a flea-market jigsaw puzzle.

Before Momma killed him, Daddy said it was a shame about my missing nose and eye, since I have a real pretty mouth. I think he meant my perfect upper teeth, but Momma took it some other way and flattened the back of his head with a hot cast-iron griddle.

In recalling his death, I think about the same griddle sitting on the stovetop, sticky with the residues of this morning’s breakfast. I have a good imagination, so I can literally see grease from the fried cheeks and bits of egg coloring the pan. I can how see the grease makes a brown ring on the stove surface too.

But then this is not hard to imagine, as I’d just looked at the same objects not too long ago, and the stain on the stove is real enough. I’ll have to get rid of the stain later, when the smell of the burnt cocks and vodka have faded.

I don’t have to hide my diary, and it’s sitting right on my desk. Eh, then again, desk and chair are terms for things normal people own. I have a turned over wire spool and a milk crate. Normal people have beds, I’m told. I have box with a blanket. The box is to keep the rats from eating part of me again.

Neither of my idiot brothers writes longhand, nor can they read it. Even if they could, only having three fingers makes my handwriting sloppy. I’m safe to write what I like, because I’m the only person in the world who can read my ugly chicken scratchings. This sometimes makes me wonder if I’m even writing the same language as everyone else, or if I’ve just developed my own crude letters and words.

After I write down my joke, I go back to cleaning. I mop the floors and drain the bloody soapy water in the kitchen. Then I go back to my room to write more. I like to write. It helps to make me forget what I am.

I hear my brothers arrive home and leave my room. They’ve been to the hospital again, and both are munching on stillborn babies.

My stomach growls, and I hold out my misshapen hands; three fingers on one hand, and two fingers on the other. “Give one to me, please?”

My brother Eddie sneers at me. “You can have half. If you want a full stillborn, then I’ll see you tonight for some sweet lovin’.”

It’s not easy being freaky.

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Zoe lives in Milan with her husband and two cats. She has never eaten a stillborn baby. No, really.